The extended fifth-order KdV equation in fluids is investigated in this paper. Based on the concept of pseudopotential, a direct and unifying Riccati-type pseudopotential approach is employed to achieve Lax pair and singularity manifold equation of this equation. Moreover, this equation is classified into three categories: extended Caudrey–Dodd–Gibbon–Sawada–Kotera (CDGSK) equation, extended Lax equation and extended Kaup–Kuperschmidt (KK) equation. The corresponding singularity manifold equations and auto-Bäcklund transformations of these three equations are also obtained. Furthermore, the infinitely many conservation laws of the extended Lax equation are found using its Lax pair. All conserved densities and fluxes are given with explicit recursion formulas.